The Shura Council “unanimously” repealed the controversial article 353 of the Penal Code that allows rapists to avoid prison if they marry the victim. The Minister of Justice affirmed that now “they will not escape the just punishment.” Standards must be updated “at the same time that societies and cultures evolve.”
Manama () – Bahrain has abolished article 353 of the Penal Code, one of the most controversial and backward laws in the field of human rights, which until now allowed the rapist to avoid trial and jail by marrying the victim, and the latter ended up marrying the victim. twice and without the possibility of opposing. Yesterday the Shura Council (the upper house of the local Parliament) voted “unanimously” to annul the law, receiving the applause of activists and human rights groups who have been fighting against the law for years.
“Rapists will not escape due punishment,” said Minister of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Nawaf Al Maawada during the parliamentary session. He then noted that “Bahrain is a country with a traditional Muslim culture” but at the same time shows “respect” for other religions, as evidenced by the recent visit of Pope Francis. “Governments – he concluded – must study and update the regulatory framework as societies and cultures evolve.”
The controversy surrounding the repair marriage remains an open and unresolved issue in many Middle Eastern countries and, in general, in the Muslim world, as the Bangladeshi chronicles show. Bahrain is the latest country in the region to abolish laws or amend the Penal Code that allowed rapists to avoid criminal prosecution simply by agreeing to marry their victims. In 2017, Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia repealed similar provisions in their legal systems. In the opposite direction is the Turkey of the “nationalism and Islam” of Recep Tayyip Erdogan who, in 2020, tried to reintroduce the repair marriage abolished in 2005, four years after the previous attempt (2016). However, a popular uprising led by women blocked the bill, which according to activist groups and NGOs only served to “hide” the growing number of cases of violence against women and femicides.
Nancy Khedouri, a member of the Shoura Council and the Foreign Relations, Defense and National Security Committee who led the repeal process, speaks of an important decision, which could not be postponed any longer. The text in force in the past, he points out to The National, “put rape victims in a worse situation than rapists”, to whom the repairing marriage allowed them to “escape the law and just punishment”. Hala Al Ansari, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Women of Bahrain, recalls that “the abolition of article 353 of the Penal Code is in line with the provisions of article 24 of family law and article 27”. Both points, she continues, require that the marriage be the result of the “agreement between the parties.” The result of the vote frees the women “from any pressure that could lead them to accept the fait accompli in case of aggression.”
The resident coordinator of the United Nations in Bahrain, Khaled El Mekwad, congratulates the decision to repeal the norm that the Shura Council has taken, and speaks of a “historic reform” that will strengthen “the protection of the fundamental rights of women and girls” in the country. “Article 353 of the Criminal Code constituted a new violation, which punished the victim instead of protecting her, forcing her to marry someone who had committed a crime against her. All of this – he concludes – only degraded her dignity, depriving her of basic rights such as choosing her partner for life and violating the pillar of consent as a condition for the validity of the contract “.
